Digital image editing applications allow users to manage and manipulate digital images that the user chooses to import into the image editing application. For example, a user can import digital photographs from a camera, card reader, or storage medium into the image editing application. Then, the user can edit the photograph in some manner. Some examples of editing are removing red-eye, adjusting color, brightness, contrast, filtering noise etc. Other examples of editing are cropping or rotating a photograph. A user can also edit a photograph by adding annotations, such as rating the photograph or other comments.
After a user finishes editing the digital images, the user may wish to transfer a copy of the image to another application. For example, the user may wish to store a copy of an edited photograph to a website. However, transferring the copy of the photograph presents problems. One such problem is that the other application may have specific formatting and settings that must be complied with. For example, a stock photography service or photograph print lab may require that photographs be transferred to them at a specific pixel size, a specific file format, or with particular types of metadata.
One technique of allowing a user to export versions from an image editing application requires the user to switch between the image editing application and the application to which the image is to be exported. For example, first the user may need to export the image to a storage medium, such as a disk drive. Then, the user opens the other application, which accesses the image from the disk drive. Finally, the other application, works with the export version. For example, the other application might upload the image to a web site. However, this technique may require the user to perform tedious operations such as “dragging and dropping” one or more icons representing the file(s) that stores the image(s).
The approaches described in this section are approaches that could be pursued, but not necessarily approaches that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated, it should not be assumed that any of the approaches described in this section qualify as prior art merely by virtue of their inclusion in this section.